Dubya's in Canada
 

Open thread to discuss his visit. First thoughts: he jumped salty when people brought up the US's involvement in Iraq and the whole Canadian Beef thing. That famous temper was clearly on display.

TOOO MUCH HYPE.
I mean, I know he's important and Canada/US relations are important, but everyone makes it such a huge thing and I just don't care that much.

Is it really not that big of a deal? I know that one of the reasons he didn't visit until now was because he was waiting for Chretien to leave office. Relations between the two countries haven't been that great lately, and some people think this will go a long way toward improving things. Personally, I'm skeptical -- I can smell a photo op a mile away.

I concur with kappaloo. Far too much hype. And I tjink it will be seen with the demonstrations. It appears that not too many people are interested in protesting his visit.

I just want to add that, while it's important we try to mend any broken relationships, it's the media hype that makes myself I know, uninterested in his visit.

And it's not even the disucssion about issues that the media is focusing on. Canada AM this morning was talking about who was and wasn't going to be at the dinner. I'm surprised their correspondent didn't start talking about who was going to be wearing what!

Sistermadly: I'm not saying his visit isn't important. It is. But the media hype is insane and unneccessary. I'd like to read about the visit - on page 3/4/5 of the newspaper. Not the first. The two men in the Walkerton water scandel took plea bargins today and I think that is much bigger news - at least in my part of Ontario.

Making Seamus go to Ottawa was definately excessive in my opinion.

did they arrest him for war crimes? or are they just all talk?

Yes, they shackled and handcuffed the President of the United States as soon as he stepped off Air Force One. Now he's being held in solitary in an undisclosed location (insiders think it may be the currently-underutilized Corel Centre) and being forced to listen to Celine Dion songs until he apologizes for being a big ol' meanie.

You mean you didn't hear about that??? :rolleyes:



Okay, now back to Realityland:
I loved President Bush's statement thanking the Canadians who lined the streets to greet him and wave at him "with all five fingers" :D

Ha ha ha...well, if Trudeau was still alive and in power, he might have shown Bush a "different finger" (LOL)

Sidebar and True Story for those who may not know[
When Trudeau was the Prime Minister (and yes, still alive), he flipped the bird to some people in Salmon Arm. Yes, our National Leader gave the public that lovely gesture....TRUE STORY.

I spent the whole day at the rallies, shooting the story for our student television network. It was interesting, half the people didn't know what they were protesting, one student leader got up and talked for 15 minutes on lowering tuition, it was stupid. It got a little harry after the march to the musee du civilisations, we were face to face with the riot police, and the SDQ aren't exactly known for the passion towards mass demonstrations. thankfully we didn't get gassed. Either way bush being in town is a reall pain in the ass, with random street closures and re routed busses.

You guys just don't try hard enough. Speaking from personal experience covering protests during the sixties for student and then commercial TV stations, there's nothing like a little pepper gas or tear gas to liven up your life.

Good for the Canadians. It looks like they handled this better than we might have.

What does that mean? Better than we might have?

And girls have used mace on me before so I understand how tear gas might liven things up for some.

-Rudey

Ahhhh the SDQ... well they only like to gas people if there are too many to smack around personally... but I think it's a good thing that they held back on the CS (military grade tear gas - SDQ doesn't use anyhting else) because that stuff sticks around for quite a while.

kinky

Simply that if this had happened here, there's at least a resonable chance it would have gotten out of hand. It doesn't seem to me that we don't have a good history of peaceful or passive protests.

]

Heh, neither do we.

I think you're just making an assumption on this. Canadians have violent protests and so does the rest of the world. In fact for quite a few of the violent protests, people travel from country to country and are able to wreak havoc protesting all sorts of things from food to debt to war.

-Rudey

You may be right, but I've sure gotten gassed a lot of times at what were supposed to be "peaceful" demonstrations.

I don't hear about that too much in Canada.

I was kinda hoping for some gassing, it would have made for great footage. The protests in Quebec City for the FTAA provided for alot of gassing as well as police beatdowns, but that was planned months in advance, and alot of protestors mobilized from around the world. This visit was only decided a couple of weeks ago, so there were only a little time to get people organized. I guess 5000 isn't a bad number for very little notice.

With all due respect -- you're nuts. That stuff is nasty. I don't ever want to experience that again.

I don't doubt it is, it was kinda a double edged sword, we had a prime camera posistion so the video would have been awesome. However the fact that we would have had to breath the gas in would have sucked a whole lot. I guess at the time our thinking was that the better the footage we get, the better our show is.

I was hoping that Jon Stewart would do something on the Bush visit to Canada..no such luck..

Well we already had enough "positive" American coverage..i mean why wouldnt the Americans be receptive to Carolyn Parish? ......

Cosign... nasty stuff... cringe every time I get a wiff of something even smelling like the Gas Hut.

On another note guys from the ceremonial duty weren't too impressed with GWB... he choose to ignore/snuff the previous PM, someone he has met many times... Even if you don't agree with your someone politically, you at least make the effort to show some modicum of respect (or so I've been raised)... so Bush, since you've demonstrated that you're a petty sack of sh*t ... thank-you for leaving.

Some might agree with you.

-Rudey

Demonstrating the intellectual integrity of your boy Bush huh? :rolleyes: Must be convient to pervert or change the world to fit your viewpoint...

Please stop violating my, and others, intellectual property with your petty editing and misrepresentation as it violates the rules you agreed to in order to post on this board...

"you warrant that you will not use this BB to post any material which is knowingly false"

Purposely misquoting or re-editing is in fact knowingly posting material that you know to be false.

Nobody posted false info. Some think that about you. And you have no intellectual property since it's not patented. This doesn't even make sense.

Again, if you want to come on here insulting and cursing at someone, don't be upset if someone holds the same views about you.

Now don't even talk about violating rules after you come on here cursing, insulting, and also have a history of threatening to kill someone on here.

-Rudey

Just saw a review of Bush's visit to Halifax and the protests there... actaully pretty classy - no fighting, no police really needed, no arrests - just people with various flags (Iraq, Canadian, UN, and US) and a whole lot of protest placards... I have to agree with the Metro paper: My favourite was the one by the guy from Dalhousie - "Frodo Failed... Bush Has The Ring".

Now that he's gone. Did this little visit help? I doubt it.
It seemed more like a photo op than anything else.

Help what?

-Rudey

I don't think it helped at all... things are still pretty much the same. It was pretty much a photo-op for Bush... with nothing of substance happening at all.

Let's look at the issues discussed (or were slated to be discussed):

Softwood Lumber - is still there with no movement on the issue.
Beef Ban - again despite the fact Bush enjoyed his steak, no really movement again.
Missile Defense - Bush brought it up, despite Martin's hopes he wouldn't.
Iraq War - Bush defended his policy using a quote from Mackenzie King's address to the house explaining Canada's entry into WW2... ignoring both the total speach and context.
U.N. - well I great proposal for change was presented, and Layton tried to bring it up with Bush (and was brushed aside)- unfortunately the US rep at the UN just resigned.
9/11 - Bush finally got around to thanking some people (not the country) for taking in 40000 stranded Americans... just too bad most of the people he was thanking were outside protesting.
Ottawa Treaty - no indication that Bush or the US have even considered signing onto the land-mine ban with the rest of the world (well other than the so-called Axis of Evil).
Kyoto - again no indication that Bush will even consider this treaty either...
ICC - again another treaty that the world has signed onto that Bush opposes...
North American Security - some discussion but still the problem of racial/religious profiling exists at border crossings - again despite protests.